4 critical questions about your current LinkedIn profile

When was the last time you paid attention to your current LinkedIn profile? Was it when you first put it up many months or years ago? Has it been stagnant? Is it out of date? Your LinkedIn profile can be a valuable asset in helping you achieve your personal and business goals. So take a few minutes to answer these 4 critical questions about your current LinkedIn profile:

Are you missing out on valuable contacts and connections because your profile doesn’t stand out from your competition?

2. Could you use the extra business that an all-star class profile could help you bring in?

3. Do you know what opportunities you may be missing because you have a less-than-optimal profile?

4. Are you being left out of potentially lucrative new jobs or new business ventures?

The answers to these questions should be (1) NO, (2) YES, (3) YES, and (4) NO!

Do you want a profile that will let you get the right answers? And the valuable contacts and connections? And the extra business? Without the lost opportunity cost? And without missing out on potentially lucrative new opportunities?

If so, invest an hour in yourself, your profile and your success on LinkedIn by learning – and applying! – the 30+ things you must know to create an all-star class profile.

You can find lots of information on the basics of building a mediocre or even an adequate LinkedIn profile in hundreds of places. But you can only get the information that will give you the right answers you need to create and all-star profile in one place: the 2-part Building Your Ideal LinkedIn Profile recordings produced by LinkedIn All-Star and Sophisticated LinkedIn Marketer Jon Turino, CEO of Jon Turino Marketing + Connections.

You’ve missed the live interactive web broadcast presentations that were made on June 23rd and June 30th. But you can get — for a limited time only — access to the pre-recorded versions of these programs without the live interruptions and asides that occurred during the live sessions. You can get access to the pristine, uninterrupted sessions that were recorded prior to the live session.

Part one in the first 28-minute recording covers optimizing your header and profile images; choosing the right title (including SEO keywords so you can be found first); creating and placing the all-important summary section and much, much more.

Part two shows you how to take maximum advantage of media links — and in which sections of your profile you can place them for maximum impact — along with publications, organizations, awards, posts (including what kinds, when and how often) — and getting and using your LinkedIn profile badge. It concludes with an all-important discussion of organizing your profile sections for maximum effectiveness — information you won’t get anywhere else!

The cost for the two live interactive sessions was $49. You won’t get a chance to ask questions in real time with the pre-recorded versions, so I’ve reduced the price for them to only $27.95 so that you can get this must-have valuable information NOW. Find out how you can make your LinkedIn profile sizzle by investing the small price and an hour of your time to learn to do just that.

You’ll get immediate access to both videos and you’ll be able to watch them as often as you’d like so that you don’t have to do all the profile work you’ll want to do all at one time. You’ll also get a pdf copy of all of the slides used in both presentations so that you can make notes specific to the sections of your profile that need the most attention.

Let’s get you started on your way to an all-star LinkedIn profile that will help you avoid missing out on valuable contacts and connections, get extra business, stop missing out on potentially lucrative new opportunities and avoid being left behind by your competition. CLICK HERE to get your course video links and pdf file delivered to you via email ASAP.

There’s no risk to you with our 7-day satisfaction guarantee. If you don’t think the course is worth the price we’ll refund your money. And you can keep the pdf file with the copies of the slides as our way of saying “Thank you!” for your business. So don’t wait! CLICK HERE NOW to order and begin creating your ideal LinkedIn profile.

You have everything to gain and nothing to lose!

April 16, 2016June 30, 2016

Marketing Office Minutes with Jon Turino

Join us for Marketing Office Minutes!

Marketing Office Minutes with Jon Turino is a series of FREE 30-minute live, interactive web conferences sessions where up to 20 participants can get answers to their marketing questions, discuss burning issues and provide experiences, advice and help to the other participants.

We’re using the zoom.us platform so that we can see and interact with each other. And each week we will feature a specially invited guest to talk about a specific aspect of marketing from social media to blogging to websites and videos. Or whatever else you want to talk about.

Each episode is recorded and posted on Jon’s YouTube channel for later viewing if you can’t participate in the live session either because of the time or the number of people — limited to 20 — connected during each event. You can participate in a session by setting up your free Zoom account at http://zoom.us and then joining the sessions at Jon’s Virtual Conference Room.

Here is a summary of the upcoming events and past events in this ongoing series. Simply set up your Zoom account, make sure your system (access, login, audio and video) is correctly set up and then click on an event image below just before 9:00 AM on Thursdays to participate. And remember: you must be one of the first 20 to connect!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wctvgIH_Hg — David Baer shares his expertise about marketing on Facebook.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Die9vdNuRFo — Robyn MacKillop shares her expertise about online business strategies.

Malee Lucas shares her expertise on website development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO8gkBHZYdo — Ted Johnson shares his expertise about virtual marketing assistants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC_eTyoSTUs — Jeany Park shares her expertise about video production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHFzUEcCQ2o — Paul Economen shares his expertise about using customer case studies in your marketing mix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlVgv4_PrF0 — Dick Kuiper shares his expertise about developing and unleashing your creativity to improve your marketing effectiveness.

Join us as special guest Renee Wilbur, CEO of WIlbur Resources International, shares her insights and expertise into the world of selling in today’s environment and tells us more about her web platform brainchild ReciProty.

Join Jon Turino for Part 1 of his new webinar on how to Build Your Ideal LinkedIn Profile. Email jon@jonturino.com for a password to this broadcast.

Join Jon Turino for Part 2 of his new webinar on how to Build Your Ideal LinkedIn Profile. Email jon@jonturino.com for a password to this broadcast.

Special Guest Greg Schraff talking about B2B Lead Generation

Want to listen only? Check out the Podcasts! Get future episodes of Marketing Office Minutes. Subscribe to my Spreaker Show Channel

February 5, 2016February 5, 2016

Sharpen Your Networking Skills

Sharpen your networking skills with this brand new online course!

Networking Course Graphic with Link

You may have seen the links on my website to some short tutorials on networking. And I hope you’ve had a chance to watch the Networking Nuggets™ series on YouTube. But you haven’t seen anything like this new course on networking!

Have you been told that you need to “network” in order to build your business or find a new, better job? Have you been networking with less success than you’d like to achieve?

Are you unsure about the what, where, why and how of networking effectively?

When you take this course you will learn the things you need to know to really make business networking really work for you.

We cover goals, attitude, and tools and talk about what you need to do after a networking event to maximize your return on investment from participating in business networking events.

Is this course for you? It is if you fit one of these descriptions:

Networking novices who’d like to become effective networkers
Experienced networkers who’d like to have new material to use
Marketing people, sales people, small business owners, public relations agents
Anyone wondering about the what, why, how and where of networking

Will you get what you need from this course? You will if you’d like to:

Watch 7 lectures with 40 minutes of video content and downloadable slides!
Learn how to decide whether networking events should be part of your marketing strategy mix
Be able to choose which networking events have the highest value for you
Participate with maximum effectiveness in networking events
Gain the most long-term results from your networking activities

I urge you to Enroll NOW! to take your business networking activities up to the next level!

Want even more information? Watch the Introduction section or visit https://jonturino.com/jons-courses/ for more information and a link that will letter you preview the entire course.

Order the new Networking Necessities, Niceties and No-Nos online course NOW! It has a 30-day money-back guarantee so your risk is absolutely zero!

Thank you for reading and please do share this post with your friends who network as part of their marketing strategy mix. They’ll thank you for it!

Forward

November 24, 2015

November 23rd Monday Marketing Minutes

The third episode of Monday Marketing Minutes™ was broadcast live via YouTube using Google+ Hangouts On Air.

Here’s a summary of the tips and advice that were included in this episode. You can click on the image above to watch the replay on YouTube at your convenience. And if you have marketing questions you’d like answered you can always send them to me at jon@jonturino.com for inclusion in a future episode of Monday Marketing Minutes.
The tips presented during the November 23rd, 2015, episode have to do with measuring your marketing. If you can’t measure something it is virtually impossible to improve it so measuring and monitoring are part of the cohesive and comprehensive marketing plan mentioned in the November 16th episode.

There are a great many tools available to you on your website and social media platforms, like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and LinkedIn Statistics and they will work best if you plan your landing pages to take advantage of them.

The idea is to monitor your statistics to see what is working the best and use that information to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t work. It’s not rocket science but it can make a huge difference in the level of success that your marketing campaigns achieve.

The advice presented during this episode dealt with considering the use of the Power of Free as a marketing strategy or tactic. You can use free things to build interest, build credibility and awareness and even to increase the size of your audience.

Think about it. The bakery that provides free samples sells a lot more muffins or cupcakes or pies or cakes than the one down the street that doesn’t offer them. Free trials are a great way to get people “hooked” on your product so that they will later convert to a version for which you get paid. The same goes for so-called “basic” accounts that give you some, but not all, of the full feature set of the product. These things work and they don’t have to cost a lot of money.

Today’s episode was the first broadcast to include a guest presenter — Mr. Leon Henry from WebStep in the U.K. Leon is a marketing and social media consultant who helps his clients similarly to what I do for mine.

We also had three questions from an audience member, Nana Bellerud, on the topic of business networking and those were addressed during the audience question portion of the program.

You can watch the replay of the complete broadcast here. Enjoy and please do remember to send me your questions for future episodes of Monday Marketing Minutes. You’ll find links to all past and future episodes HERE.

And, as always, please do contact me if you’d like help with your marketing plans, strategies, and tactics. I’d love to be of service to you in building your business through better marketing.

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November 24, 2015November 24, 2015

November 16th Monday Marketing Minutes

The second episode of Monday Marketing Minutes™ was broadcast live via YouTube using Google+ Hangouts On Air.

The tips presented during the November 16th, 2015, episode had to do with understanding that marketing is a process and not an event. Your marketing strategy and tactics need to be well planned in advance of the execution of your plan.

The plan itself must be cohesive if it is to be maximally successful. That means that all of the underlying strategies, tactics, messages and media selection must tie together and have a common look and feel. This applies as well to online marketing via social media and the design of websites and landing pages. The plan must also be comprehensive, covering all the bases in terms of media and messaging.

I also spoke about remembering that marketing involves everyone in the company from corporate management to customer service personnel — including every employee — and not just the marketing department.

The advice presented during this episode dealt with remembering WHY people buy: based on emotions and supported by logic. The emotions can fall into many categories, including being fed or driven by necessity, need, want, desire or ego. So when the messages are crafted they need to trigger the buying impulses based on the emotions you think will be strongest for your product or service.

I used some slides from my Probiotic Marketing™ presentation/infographic to illustrate these points. People buy things — or do anything else for that matter — based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Thus, you need to craft your message to match the level of need — physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem and the self-actualization levels — if you are to be successful. The three slides that followed in the broadcast were used to illustrate these points.

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November 24, 2015November 24, 2015

November 9th Monday Marketing Minutes

The first episode of Monday Marketing Minutes™ was broadcast live via YouTube using Google+ Hangouts On Air.

The tips presented during the November 9th, 2015, episode had to do with analyzing your current customer base so that you can find out who your best customers are and why they are your best customers. With this information in hand, you can then craft a strategy to find more customers like them from other sources.

Knowing who your best customers are, what they are buying and, perhaps most importantly, why they are buying is critical to identifying places to locate additional members of your most successful target markets, crafting messages that will resonate with those prospects the way your current messaging is working with your current top customers and using the right media for reaching new audiences containing prospects who best fit your target customer profile.

The advice presented during this episode dealt with the message development step in crafting the most effective messages — messages that not only appeal to the logic the customer uses to justify purchasing what you are selling but also to the emotions — the belly — that trigger the buying impulse. Both elements must usually be present to motivate an immediate purchase.

It’s also critical to understand WHY people buy things in order to craft the right message for them. Eliminating a problem or alleviating pain is often a good strategy, depending on the product or service being offered. Other good inducements include reducing fear of loss, desire for gain, the need for comfort and convenience, the satisfaction of emotional needs and the creation of a better lifestyle or life condition.

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October 12, 2015

What Can I Do For You?

How can I help you? How may I be of service? What might you need that would make your life easier, more productive, more profitable or more fun? What keeps you awake at night?

These are the kinds of open-ended questions that are designed to get to the root cause of a person’s needs, wants and desires so that you can help them — either personally, professionally or with your business product or service.

Years ago, when I was selling pianos and electronic organs in my father’s music store I learned the value of open-ended questions. If, for example, you ask someone “Can I help you?” there are multiple possible answers other than the “Yes” that you are looking for. “No,” “Not now,” and “I’m fine” come to mind.

Not very conducive to furthering the conversation — or the sales process. And if you can’t “sell” someone you can’t help them. I am a believer in what is often called education based marketing. That means that I promote the idea that you provide enough up-front valuable information to your prospective clients or customers to establish yourself as a “trusted advisor” so that WHEN they need what you offer that they choose you.

My work in helping my clients identify their true target markets, crafting messages that will resonate with the people in those markets and selecting the right media for delivering those messages led me to develop an infographic call “Probiotic Marketing.” The name came from watching a TV commercial for yogurt of all things, but the idea is to get to the guts of the client. Yes, it’s a play on words, but hopefully one that will be remembered. And the “gist” of the method is illustrated in the three drawings below.

The idea is to map your messages about your product or service to the right levels in the hierarchy of needs and to craft those messages using words that will resonate with the emotional (e.g., gut level) level of the prospective buyer. Pretty simple. But not always easy.

When you think about your marketing it might be useful to consider how asking the right questions can help you learn to map your messages to your markets.

I hope you found this information helpful and I welcome your feedback.

June 18, 2015August 15, 2015

Networking Necessities, Niceties and No-Nos

Networking Necessities, Niceties, and No-Nos

If networking is part of your marketing strategy mix, and for many if not most of us it should be, are you really good at it or is it something you do because you’ve been told that you should do it – like I just did? If you are selling a commodity product, you may not consider networking as an important element of your marketing strategy. Things, after all, should pretty much sell themselves if they are useful and provide clear benefits to the buyer, right? Well, maybe… It might depend on the kind of things you are selling.

Food storage bowls come to mind. You wouldn’t normally think of increasing your sales of these via networking as an important element of your marketing strategy.

But even with the Internet my spouse had a heck of a time finding some help selecting new bowls until I met someone at a networking event who sold them. How about auto insurance? Sure you can buy it over the phone or the Internet if you don’t believe in the value that an agent you know, like and trust can add to your purchase. Having an accident, of course, can change your point of view on this and insurance agents who network know this to be a fact.

I’m a believer in networking because it works for me and for a great many of my clients. The Networking Tips topic in my monthly newsletter is one of the most popular sections. But you have to do networking right if it is going to work for you. So here are some tips on doing it right.

Necessities

The first necessity is a positive attitude. If you dread networking activities it is going to show. You are going to be more of a wallflower than a winner, you are less likely to meet as many people as you could and the impressions you make may not be stellar. The next necessity is a set of goals. How many new people do you want to meet at a networking event? What kinds of people do you want to meet? These goals will help you to select the right networking events. If you sell garden hoses, for example, a home and garden networking event will be much more productive for you than a meeting of condo owners where gardening is done by the association’s hired help.

Niceties

Once you have the necessities covered, it’s time to consider some niceties. Wear a name badge so that people know who you are when you come up to them to ask them what business they are in. Invest in a permanent badge with your company logo on it and wear it on your upper right side to make it easy for people to read as you approach to shake hands. That way you won’t spend your time wrestling with a generic paper badge that will dislodge itself several times during an event. And be confident but considerate when shaking hands. No one likes to have their hand crushed so don’t try to show your dominance of others by doing that to them.

No-Nos

This list could get pretty long but here are the top first few. Mostly talking coupled with little listening is a no-no. How will you find out how you might be able to help someone if you don’t find out what they need? And why waste your own time talking to someone who might never need what you offer. Don’t interrupt an ongoing conversation between others. It’s rude. Wait for your opening while listening to the conversation. You never know – you might learn something! Don’t monopolize. A networking event is not the place to present your entire company and product or services story. It is a time to establish enough rapport so that you can arrange a meeting at a later date given that it makes sense for both parties.

Photo credit: Phoenix Lotus Productions, APACC Mega-Mixer.

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Article credit: The A to Z Blog Book and Inspiration Now! (both by Jon Turino and available on Amazon and Kindle).

August 7, 2013August 7, 2013

Praise for a Faucet Maker

About a dozen years ago my spouse and I remodeled the kitchen in our condominium. We bought a beautiful Moen faucet for the sink and have been very happy with it until recently when the little rubber piece on top of the extensible spout that covers the stream vs. spray mode began to wear out. Still worked OK, of course, but it didn’t look “pretty” anymore. So I was tasked with solving this problem.

To the web I went for the Moen website. One click to get to kitchen faucets. Another click to browse by collection. A quick scroll to find the Extensa model number. Then to Replacement Parts for an excellent pictorial illustration of the faucet parts. But not down to the little grey gasket. Only to the whole spout. Hmm. Copy the spout part number from the illustration, paste it into the Part Number box and, viola, the $44.05 pullout spout is ready to be added to my cart for purchase.

Trouble is, though, I don’t need a whole new spout for $44.05. I only need a rubber gasket to replace the one that is worn on my otherwise perfectly good spout. So to the Contact Us tab for a phone number, which was toll free, and then a phone menu that was mercifully clear and short with only a few minutes wait for a human being to whom I described my situation.

The customer service rep asked me for the faucet model number, which I had written down. She asked me a couple of questions about the faucet, including the location of the logo and the color of the spout and then asked me for my name, address, zip code and email address. When I inquired as to why she needed this information to answer my question about whether or not I could buy just the gasket I was informed that she needed the information to ship me, without cost, a new spout since the gasket was not a user replaceable item and since the faucet is guaranteed for life. She then asked if delivery within 5-7 days was OK or if I needed it sooner, in which case I would have to pay for expedited shipping.

I was, frankly, blown away by this kind of warranty and this kind of service. She asked me if there was anything else she could do for me and told me that I’d receive an email confirming my order for the replacement spout. And that promised email was in my inbox before I even hung up the phone.

Why am I telling you this story? Because I think it’s high time we tell as many people as possible about good customer service as we usually tell people about bad customer service. You see the horror stories all over the Internet. Complaints about never being able to speak to a human being. Complaints about things failing one day after the warranty expires. Complaints about rude customer service representatives.

Don’t you tell as many people as possible about your unsatisfactory customer service experiences and maybe tell one or two, if you even tell anyone, about the good ones? How will the companies with bad customer service improve if we consumers don’t provide them with examples of what good customer service looks, sounds and feels like? We need to publicize the companies that do it right and, in my humble opinion, Moen gets a grade of “A+” for their policies, procedures and people.

In writing this article I went back to the Moen website and noticed their tagline: “Buy it for looks. Buy it for life.®” And I guess they really mean it based on the way they walked the talk with me. I know that if I ever have to buy another faucet, or recommend one to someone else, you can bet that a Moen product will be high on the list.

There may be other faucet makers who do as good a job as Moen. I just don’t have any personal experience on which to base an opinion pro or con so I can’t comment with any knowledge about them. But if I ever do have a good experience with another company like the one I had with Moen I promise to publicize it as well.

Do you have example of things you are especially pleased about? Or about outstanding customer service experiences? Please share them and ask others to do so as well. Thanks for reading.

Scoop.it

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July 18, 2013July 22, 2013

Ewwww! Gross!! — Marketing the Unmarketable

Ewwww! Gross!! – Marketing the Unmarketable

Karen Rice from Myrtle Beach, SC, posted the graphic you see to the left a few days ago. Here’s a snapshot of the conversation as a result of her post:

Jon Turino: Wrong question! Whose brand are you buying? Why? Strength? Softness? Economy? Some other reason? Get it together at http://jonturino.com/probiotic-infographic/ Enjoy!

Monday at 10:32pm, Kathleen O’Mara: I don’t want to know! LOL

Monday at 10:44pm, Kim Henson: I would have never thought of all that, Jon Turino. Guess that’s why you market and I write.

17 hours ago, Kim Henson: Me either, Kathleen O’Mara. Gross.

17 hours ago, Jon Turino: I wouldn’t want to be the marketer for this product either. But the people who are have come up with the bears who (1) shouldn’t use so much and (2) won’t end up with traces on their behinds, the “Enjoy the Go” campaign, using quarters to illustrate strength (with blue water), etc. Now let’s talk about probiotics and gluten free and how they can make your experience in the WC so much more enjoyable that you’ll sing and dance about it on national TV. For more of my “humor” get a copy of http://jonturino.com/packages-pricing/the-a-to-z-blog-book-jon-turino-on-amazon-and-kindle/ . There are 26 articles in it that we can chat about.

14 hours ago, Susan Baiden Chestnut: This one makes me go Hmmm!

9 hours ago, Kim Henson: Susan Baiden Chestnut, it makes me go Ewwww! Lol.

Thus I found the title for this post. And I got to thinking: What other products are really tough to market?

How about hemorrhoid creams?

How about medicines for adult rash?

There’s a new TV campaign for men who leak a little after peeing whose tagline is “Protect your manhood.”

And pads for women who might leak a little when they laugh too hard, or cough, or are having their periods have been on the market for years.

Then there are adult diapers for both sexes.

Have I missed anything yet?

These are not generally the kinds of products that people talk about at social gatherings or business networking meetings, folks! They are normally quietly discussed between close friends to whom one trusts a seemingly or potentially embarrassing secret while looking for advice. And, like toilet paper, each has its own features and benefits when it comes to solving the problem – relieving the pain – associated with the condition.

I don’t know how much money advertisers spend on promoting toilet paper but it’s in the multiple millions of dollars per year. As are the expenditures for the other products mentioned above and illustrated in this post.

So what’s my point?

My point is that while everybody buys these things, the ones that get bought most often are the ones that are marketed most successfully. Just because everyone needs it and uses it doesn’t mean that you can expect to sell it without marketing.

If it can’t be found by the consumer or if your brand for your bottom is not “top of mind” when the need to buy it arises then you simply won’t have a viable business.

So let’s give a “hat’s off” – or a “bottoms up” – to the very creative folks who find new ways to market the unmentionables. And please give me a call if you need help marketing your product or service.

As always, thanks for reading and please do make time to comment pro or con.

Scoop.it